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Steve snapped the compass closed as Natasha approached.
“It’s going to work,” Natasha said
“I know,” he replied, “because I don’t know what I’m gonna do if it doesn’t.”
“You don’t have to hide that, you know,” she said, nodding towards the compass that she knew was in his hand.
“I’m not hiding anything,” he said simply, not offering any further explanation or denial as he slipped the compass into a pocket, zipped it, and then lay his hand over the pocket.
“Right,” she said, as a indicator beeped on the front control panel. “Saved by the bell,” she added, as she went up to check their location. “We’re coming up on the coordinates Scott gave us.” Actually, she hadn’t been planning to say anything else, as much as she was usually prone to pushing Steve. Even she had her limits, and this was, after all, the end of the world.
She sat down in the pilot’s chair as the orange light outside lit up her face, her blond hair looking closer to its former red than it had in some time. “We’re here,” she said, as the ship came to a stop.
A few days before the mission
Steve looked around the conference room, trying not to let his glance linger too long on all of the empty chairs. All of the Avengers who were left and anyone who might have information on the Infinity Stones were gathered in the conference room. Scott’s appearance and the technology he had brought with him meant that they had the ability to travel to the past.
Their plan was to make simultaneous assaults on all of the known locations of the stones. Simultaneous so that they would have some chance of success before Thanos realized what they were doing. They hoped to get all of them, but even if they could only get one, that would stop the worst part of what Thanos had done.
“So that brings us to the Soul Stone,” Steve continued, “What do we know?”
“Gamora told Thanos that the stone was on Vormir,” Nebula began, her metallic voice sounding even more harsh than usual in the half-empty conference room.
“It is said that the Soul Stone is guarded by a man with a red skull,” Wong added.
Steve’s head turned sharply, as did the rest of the humans. “That’s impossible,” Natasha said.
“No it’s not,” Steve said. He had never told most of them how the Red Skull had vanished before his eyes; it just hadn’t seemed important. “What if we could get to him before he becomes the keeper of the Soul Stone?”
“How could we possibly do that?” Bruce asked.
Steve sighed. “I was there when the Red Skull started all this,” he said. “And it looks like I’m going to see him again when we finish it.”
The plan was simple. Steve would come out of the Quantum Realm and onto the Valkyrie shortly before he crashed it in 1945. He would carefully avoid his past self and wait until the end of the fight. Just as the Red Skull was taken up by the beam of light Steve had seen, he would jump and be taken with him. His past self would most likely see him for a second. Hopefully his past self would think it was only a hallucination. Even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter, as he would have no one to tell about it for 70 years.
After he had successfully retrieved the Soul Stone, he would press the device on his hand that Scott had given him. That would take him back to the Quantum Realm, where Natasha was waiting in the ship.
He listened, concealed behind a bulkhead, as his past self struggled with the Red Skull. His timing was perfect as he jumped into the stream of stars. For a brief moment, he saw his own astonished face. Even though he had known he would be tempted and had known that he had to resist, his mouth had opened, starting to form the words “Tell her…” But he was gone before he had gotten the words out.
Getting the Soul Stone proved to be the easiest part of the mission. The Red Skull was already worn down, and Steve was so angry that he couldn’t change what had happened, what he was about to do to himself and to Peggy, that he easily overpowered him.
When he returned he was so calm that at first Natasha thought he had failed. He told her that the plan had worked flawlessly and showed her the soul stone in its containment field.
“We won,” she said, hugging him. “We did,” he said, his hand on the pocket with the compass, but he didn’t tell her what it had cost him.
For a while, it was easier. He celebrated reunions with friends old and new. But slowly, things began to settle down. With nothing threatening the world that needed the Avengers, Steve found himself with more free time on his hands than he had had, well, almost ever.
Bruce was back in the lab, and Thor was busy resettling his people. Clint was at home with his family. Wanda and Vision were spending every possible moment together. Tony and Pepper were immersed in wedding planning, wanting to make it official as soon as possible. Natasha, as always, came and went as she pleased, and he had long ago given up asking her what she did with her time because he knew he would never get a straight answer.
He was in his room at the Avengers compound listening to old records one Friday evening. Tomorrow was Tony and Pepper’s wedding. He already had his suit pressed and laid out, even though the wedding wasn’t until the early evening. He wasn’t surprised when Natasha appeared at the door, having heard her very light footsteps coming down the hall.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asked.
“I’m busy,” he answered too quickly, anticipating some misguided attempt to get him out.
“Look, I know you’re having a good time marinating in—“ she paused as she looked around his room, taking in the scattered record albums, half-finished drawings, and books he had stacked around, “—well, whatever you’re marinating in, but I met a girl I think you’d like.”
“I’m not interested in a blind date, Romanov.”
“I didn’t offer you one. I just met someone I thought you’d like. She’s different, I promise. Just call her and chat a little. I think you have a lot in common with her. Anyway, she’s not up for going out on a date just yet; she’s not feeling well right now. But you could give her a call. I wrote her number down for you on real paper, old school, like you like,” she finished, handing him a piece of paper neatly folded in half with a phone number on it, nothing else.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked after he had taken the paper.
He opened the paper, turning it in his hands. It was a local area code. “I think you have very nice penmanship,” he said, after a short pause.
“Would it kill you to humor me just this once?”
“Probably,” he said. “Look, I know what you’re trying to do—“
“No you don’t,” she interrupted.
“—and I appreciate it,” he finished.
“No you don’t,” she repeated, heading out the door, “but you will,” she yelled over her shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”
Steve listened as she walked down the hallway. It wasn’t like her to give up so easily. He looked at the number again. There was something different about the way Natasha had tried to get him to go out with someone this time. There was something she wasn’t telling him. But he didn’t much care what it was. He put the number in the trash and turned up the volume on the turntable.
The reception was in full swing in the ballroom. Steve adjusted his boutonniere with one hand while holding a champagne glass in the other. It was warm and loud, and he had to half-shout to hold a conversation with Sam. He still wasn’t much one for parties, and he had only been able to get through Tony’s bachelor party last week with the help of some of Thor’s Asgardian liquor. But to his surprise, he was able to rally from his melancholy. Weddings were happy occasions, after all, and he was genuinely happy for Tony and Pepper.
“No, I said ‘thirsty,’ not ‘Thursday,’ Sam was practically yelling in his ear when Natasha appeared beside his elbow. “How about a dance, old man?” she asked.
“The band’s on a break,” Steve answered.
“Oh, they’re just about to start again. Come on,” she said as she dragged him towards the dance floor.
“Don’t worry about me,” Sam yelled after her as they walked away. “I don’t want to dance right now, thanks.”
Steve and Natasha faced each other on the dance floor. The band was back, but they hadn’t started playing yet. “Still no music,” Steve pointed out.
“Oh, they’ll start in a second. I asked the band to play something slow, so you don’t step on your partner’s toes,” Natasha responded with a smile.
Steve’s eyes narrowed at her phrasing, unsure of how to reply. There was no way she could know what that meant to him. He pushed it out of his mind.
Natasha gave a signal to the band, and a slow tempo started. He was about to take her hand when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
“May I cut in?” he heard a woman’s voice say from behind him. He turned around, and looked into the face of Peggy Carter.
She was wearing a blue dress and a corsage, just as he had once imagined. She touched his cheek with her hand. Steve took her hand in his; it was cold and shaking.
He tried to turn his head towards Natasha, but couldn’t manage to take his eyes off Peggy. “How?”
“We talked it over, and we thought that although it’s too risky to change the past, we could change the future,” she explained. “So Strange went back to 2016 and asked Peggy if she’d like to be young again. And—”
“And I did,” Peggy interrupted, stepping even closer to Steve so that their bodies were almost touching. “I wanted this more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
Steve still wouldn’t let go of Peggy, but he reached out with one hand to Natasha, squeezing her arm and looked her in the eye. “Thank you, Natasha,” he said.
“I told you you’d like this girl,” she answered as she left the dance floor. “Maybe from now on you’ll listen to me,” she added as she walked away.
“Are you ready for our dance?” Peggy asked.
Steve nodded as he took her in his arms. “I’m ready,” he answered.
Natasha had joined Sam, who had watched the scene unfold from a discreet distance. They looked on as the couple danced. Tentative at first, after a minute Steve’s confidence seemed to grow, and to their surprise he even spun her. “I wasn’t even sure he knew how to dance,” Natasha said, and Sam nodded and laughed.
The watched as Peggy said something to Steve and he leaned in closer to hear her. He smiled and then pulled her closer, and then the biggest smile they had ever seen spread over his face as the music swelled.